Editor's Comments

by David Frank

Translation is quite a broad, fascinating and significant topic. The
Journal of Translation seeks to provide an outlet for scholarly
writings in the area of translation and provide a source of information and
insights for anyone interested in translation. Subtopics dealt with in this
journal range from the theoretical to the practical to the historical.
Manuscripts are selected for publication in the Journal of Translation
based on their explicit relevance to some aspect of the topic of translation.
They also must be written in a scholarly fashion and make an original
contribution.

As the Journal of Translation is an e-journal that is freely
available to anyone who can access the internet, it is becoming increasingly
international and diverse. This diversity is welcome, but it also brings new
challenges. It makes the vetting and editorial processes much more
complicated.

This issue of the Journal of Translation is slight, in quantity if
not in quality. The problem is not a lack of manuscripts submitted to the
journal for consideration, but more that the manuscripts that have been
submitted—including those that do indeed deal with the topic of
translation—represent a bewildering variety of backgrounds and scholarly
standards from around the world. Since nearly all submitted manuscripts have
something valuable to contribute, the challenge is for the editors and referees
to understand the manuscripts well enough to be able to evaluate them, and then,
for those that are provisionally accepted for publication, to work with the
author to bring them up to the exposition and citation standards that the
journal must use. There are some excellent manuscripts being processed, and the
readers of this journal can look forward to a greater flow of material in the
next year.

We are including a Short Note in this issue of the Journal of
Translation. This Short Note is on the topic of translating Biblical Greek
into English. The Editor and the Editorial Board will be discussing the value of
extending the Short Note component of the Journal of Translation, to
facilitate dialogue and the expansion of our knowledge related to translation,
through notes that are something less than a peer-reviewed article. This could
be a way of stimulating participation and increasing the usefulness of the
journal without adding significantly to the editorial overhead.

We would like to express our appreciation to the following people who have
evaluated manuscripts for the journal over the past year: